By CASEY MCNERTHNEY, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, May 21, 2008

The moment that changed Pete Hayden's life happened one summer afternoon about four decades ago.

A friend recalls Hayden saying that he was with his parents -- the mentors who, out of love, forced Hayden to be independent and self-sufficient, and didn't cut him slack because he had been legally blind since childhood.

During an afternoon baseball game, they told their only son that he needed to find a job.

"I think I can put him to work," a concessions man said.

So, Hayden sold Pepsi that summer, and kept selling concessions through high school. When major league teams came to Seattle, so did Hayden, who sold concessions at local sports events for more than three decades.

A few days before his unexpected death Saturday from health complications, Hayden was on the phone making arrangements for upcoming Mariners games.

Hayden, who has no immediate family but remembered hundreds of friends by name, was 59.

"Nobody was going to tell him he wasn't going to work -- and work just as well as somebody who had vision," said friend Greg Flakus, who met Hayden when he sold concessions at Seattle Sounders games. "One thing you noticed about him was how organized he was in his own way."

Hayden had a machine around his neck that scanned bills and announced the currency. He kept the bills in separate pockets so he'd know how much change to give, friends said.

During Hayden's time working at an Occidental Avenue South booth before Mariners games, Flakus said, he had a signature call: "Peanuts! Hot ones! Best ones in the house! Get them before you go inside the ballgame!"

Hayden was also a staple at the Seafair hydroplane races, selling ice cream and soft drinks at the entrance to Sayres Park.

Despite Hayden's sight getting worse with age, for years he worked rock concerts, Huskies football games, Seahawks games and the Portland Rose Festival. In the summer, Flakus said, Hayden sold ice cream on Alki Beach and, recently, bags of peanuts at Mariners games.

Friends said Hayden -- a staunch proponent of the Americans with Disabilities Act -- was adamant about getting what he wanted and protecting his turf.

"He had a resolve that was beyond imagination and far beyond what most of us would hope to have," said Kirk Johns, Hayden's friend since the third grade. "Working, for him, was truly his life."

Not that he desperately needed the money. Hayden, whose two cousins on the East Coast were his closest family, had government assistance and a modest trust fund from his parents that helped pay for his West Seattle apartment.

But going to work gave Hayden a routine, a challenge he loved and a social opportunity, friends said. And he was happy to use some of his concessions profits on dog treats because Hayden, who was fond of animals since childhood, always liked to have a little something when visiting friends' pets.

With exceptional memory, he recalled hundreds of names and contacts, friends said. He recognized cab and bus drivers' voices and knew them by name. Hayden did the same with sports fans who came to get snacks specifically from him. Friends hope some of them come to a pending memorial service.